Intersection to Build an Open Data Dashboard for LinkNYC

Intersection has announced an opportunity for an internship for someone to build an Open Data Dashboard for LinkNYC. From the posting:

As an intern for the LinkNYC Engineering team, you will build our new Open Data Dashboard for LinkNYC. This dashboard will allow New Yorkers to see all LinkNYC devices on a map, displaying information about a Link (Address, cross streets, etc) and status (Health, Issues, Scheduled Repair, etc).

This application would, one assumes, draw from datasets resembling those already posted to the NYC.gov Open Data portal in particular the LinkNYC Kiosk Status dataset. Other datasets related to LinkNYC include locations of the kiosks, usage statistics, functional status, permit applications, and so on.

Many of the LinkNYC datasets published to the Open Data portal have not been updated in months, while those that update regularly contain obviously inaccurate or incomplete data. Whoever takes on the internship to build out the Open Data Dashboard will, one can hope, get better data than what CityBridge currently makes available to the public.

The LinkNYC Kiosk Status dataset purports to give hourly snapshots of what features do or do not work on every single kiosk. I set up a relatively crude set of scripts to download, parse, and format that data, generating web pages showing what CityBridge reported about the functional status of every active kiosk.

I would have pursued this project with more interest if not for obvious data quality issues. WiFi, according to CityBridge, functions at virtually 100% uptime across the LinkNYC network, as does the phone calling feature. That’s preposterous.

The data on the working status of the tablet devices, however, looks entirely credible, at this moment showing 109 tablets not working, or 6.14% of the network. I’ve corroborated many of these tablet devices not working, with some of them down for months at a time.

It makes no sense that 109 tablets would be down with only one kiosk unable to make phone calls. In virtually all cases one cannot make phone calls from these machines when the tablet does not work.

Still, the quality of the tablet status portion of the LinkNYC Kiosk Status dataset suggests the WiFi and phone calling reports published by CityBridge might some day improve. For that reason I keep an eye on it.

The Kiosk Status dataset published to NYC.gov has its problems but still has some value for revealing insights into how the LinkNYC network works day-to-day. The snapshot of LinkNYC kiosks installed but never activated reveals that CityBridge could be on the hook for, as of this writing, over $1.6 million dollars in penalties for installing 52 kiosks but never activating them. Some of those kiosks have stood on city sidewalks for years, doing absolutely nothing. CityBridge blamed Verizon for these delays, citing logistical problems with their underground conduit system.

Another interesting insight shows that kiosks in the area affected by the West Side Manhattan blackout of July 19, 2019, failed to stay alive. The ability of these machines to remain functional during emergencies and blackouts paints a pretty bleak picture for anyone’s ability to make a phone call in a power outage after all the payphones have been removed.

I also recall seeing a significant increase in LinkNYC kiosks reported as not working during a cold snap last winter, when temperatures fell below zero and the kiosks apparently couldn’t handle it.

I just hope whoever gets the internship uses better data than CityBridge currently publishes at NYC.gov. If the current public dataset is all they have to work with then there would not seem to be much point in the Open Data Dashboard for LinkNYC.

Then again, if underlying data feeding the new Dashboard accurately reflects the reality of how many LinkNYC kiosks do not work it could look pretty bad for CityBridge.